I will share that great conversation with Tim Wise on Monday of next week as a holiday treat of sorts.

[My conversation with Jason Colavito about fringe history and race can be found here. If you have not listened to it yet, I do think you will be pleasantly surprised. Jason does some great teaching and sharing.]

I have also been busy with what is planned as a 2 part essay for Alternet where I ask some necessary, and for some, quite uncomfortable questions about the worshipful culture that insulates American police from accountability for their murder, harassment, and brutal treatment of black and brown people.

Police fetishists and Right-wing authoritarians will not be pleased...but then again are they ever pleased by truth-telling about racism and the culture of cruelty?

Several years ago I posted some photos of former black human chattel as compiled in the WPA archives. The photos of human beings who were owned as property was so evocative, powerful, disturbing, and moving, that I observed how "their eyes are watching us".

James Gamble, whose father was the sheriff at the time, told the Herald in 2003 he was in the back seat with Stinney when his father drove the boy to prison.

“There wasn’t ever any doubt about him being guilty,” he said. “He was real talkative about it. He said, ‘I’m real sorry. I didn’t want to kill them girls.’ “

Indeed, just 84 days after the girls’ deaths, Stinney was sent to the electric chair. Today, an appeal from a death sentence is all but automatic, and years, even decades, pass before an execution, which provides at least some time for new evidence to emerge.
Stinney was barely 5 feet tall and not yet 100 pounds. The electric chair’s straps were too big for his frail body. Newspapers at the time reported he had to sit on books to reach the headpiece. And when the switch was flipped, the convulsions knocked down the large mask, exposing his tearful face to the crowd.

George Stinney was arrested, convicted of murder in a one-day trial and executed in 1944 — all in the span of about three months and without an appeal. The speed in which the state meted out justice against the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century was shocking and extremely unfair, Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen wrote in her ruling Wednesday.

“I can think of no greater injustice,” Mullen wrote.

It took Mullen nearly four times as long to issue her ruling as it took in 1944 to go from arrest to execution.

Stinney's case has long been whispered in civil rights circles in South Carolina as an example of how a black person could be railroaded by a justice system during the Jim Crow era where the investigators, prosecutors and juries were all white.

The case received renewed attention because of a crusade by textile inspector and school board member George Frierson. Armed with a binder full of newspaper articles and other evidence, he and a law firm believed the teen represented everything that was wrong with South Carolina during the era of segregation.

“It was obviously a long shot but one we thought was worth taking,” said attorney Matt Burgess, whose firm argued that Stinney should get a new trial.

Mullen went a step further by vacating Stinney's conviction. Her 29-page order included references to the 1931 Scottsboro Boys case in Alabama, where nine black teens were convicted of raping two white women. Eight of them were sentenced to death.

12-year-old Tamir Rice is dead in the immediate present. The video evidence of his murder by cop clearly demonstrates that he was shot with extreme prejudice. The police thug union still defends the actions of a known incompetent who was fired from his previous job because of sub-par performance.

Tamir and George are united in death through their murder by the state and the dual processes of adultification and white supremacy.

The subheading? "Ef I hadn't er killed you, you would hev grown up to rule over me."

The image on the right is of Darren Wilson, the cop who killed Michael Brown. In his grand jury testimony, Wilson spun a white supremacist fantasy/nightmare tale in which Brown was a giant negro, one that who was demonically possessed, and had the superhuman ability to run through a fusillade of bullets as he tried to kill the innocent, white, and vulnerable police officer.

A group project:

1. What do you see when you look at these images?

2. How would you caption/narrate this series of images for a photo essay?

3. Are you like me? Do you also feel the eyes of Tamir Rice and George Stinney on you?

1. (a) I see evil. I also see the second period of American history where the north allowed the south to subjugate people of African origin. If the civil war was really about ending slavery, would this have happened? Of course, not.

(b) A boy with sad haunting eyes. Aside: The picture is distorted though. In cartoons, the villain's face is often elongated to make him look more evil. I know this was unintended but a much better picture can be found here.

(c) A innocent, happy go lucky boy.

(d) Terminator VI.

2. American progress.

3. It's incredibly soul breaking to look at their pictures knowing that their lives were so violently and needlessly snuffed out.

----

Why do the police feel so desperate to "solve" a brutal murder?

Why is it that any black man, woman or child can be sacrificed (literally) to "solve" such a murder?

Where are the comparisons of Nazi Germany to America today?

Now the other thing that we've gotta come to see now that many of us didn't see too well during the last ten years -- that is that racism is still alive in American society, and much more wide-spread than we realized. And we must see racism for what it is. It is a myth of the superior and the inferior race. It is the false and tragic notion that one particular group, one particular race is responsible for all of the progress, all of the insights in the total flow of history. And the theory that another group or another race is totally depraved, innately impure, and innately inferior.

In the final analysis, racism is evil because its ultimate logic is genocide. Hitler was a sick and tragic man who carried racism to its logical conclusion. And he ended up leading a nation to the point of killing about 6 million Jews. This is the tragedy of racism because its ultimate logic is genocide. If one says that I am not good enough to live next door to him, if one says that I am not good enough to eat at a lunch counter, or to have a good, decent job,or to go to school with him merely because of my race, he is saying consciously or unconsciously that I do not deserve to exist...Nobody can doubt the need if he thinks about the fact that since 1963 some 50 Negroes and white civil rights workers have been brutally murdered in the state of Mississippi alone, and not a single person has been convicted for these dastardly crimes. There have been some indictments but no one has been convicted. And so there is a need for a federal law dealing with the whole question of the administration of justice.—video; transcript

Have you seen Top 5 yet? If you get a chance check it out...or wait, not too long, for it to be at Red Box or on Itunes. His whole interview is great. I would love to see a discussion with Rock and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

“He was real talkative about it. He said, ‘I’m real sorry. I didn’t want to kill them girls.’ “What have they done to George Stinney, that he said this? His deeply saddened eyes reach me deep inside. They express an unspeakable sorrow of what had happened to the two little girls & of what had happened to him. Three kids brutally killed.

I think —although I can't find where —that we've shared this already:Tim Wise:In short, and though I know it won’t strike you as, well, nice: fuck nice. And if you’re more disturbed about my language here than the death of black men at the hands of police, then know that you are the problem, and you’ve made it clear what side you’re on. It will not be forgotten. —The Nice White People Who Stick Their Heads in the Sand and Perpetuate Murderous Injustice

I have listened to your recent podcast and it really is a great conversation on pop culture, Ancient Aliens, and contemporary iterations of white supremacy.

1. In the first picture I see a conservative's lament for the modest outcome of the Civil Rights Era. How many mouth-breathers wish that baby had been Obama or Eric Holder?

2. In order of your pictures left to right:a) The Educationb) The Offeringc) The Lifed) The Maker

3. Tamir! He was so young! Look at his face and then that of Darren Wilson.What the Cleveland Police chief said... what a fuckface!Brittney Cooper wrote a piece recently wondering about some advice she had been given, "people are not likely to change very much." She wondered how much white America had really changed from the 1950's to now. Not very much if a 12 year old can be shot in less than 2 seconds and America stands up for his murderer.

I agree. Yes, the banality of goodness --to walk down the street and not see injustice everywhere --to be conveniently naive --to not see POC as Equal People --to not see Others' struggles as their own.

If you know what we know then not to do or say anything is the banality of evil. Speak truth to everyone that it is safe to do so. Support activism everywhere. No less than the future depends upon it.

P.S.: In the meantime I read the articles which are linked in the above text, & came to the conclusion that George Stinney didn't say what I quoted above, because the family of only one girl is opposing George's rehabilitation, which I find very strange because all circumstances of George's conviction underline his innocence. If a little girl is murdered, I would with all my force oppose that an innocent person would be sacrificied for the deed while the murderer is running free.

That picture of Stinney is definitely haunting. Its seems less fearful as it does a sad, weary of the violence and hatred of the time. The look seems to say, why are they doing this to me?

I would caption that series a continuum of racist violence and hatred, then and now.

The first picture brings to mind those horrific pictures of lynching, with white ghouls standing around smiling in front of bloodied and burned bodies. Looking at those pictures it made me wonder, what kind of people could stand in front of these bodies, swinging from trees or burned at the stake in a celebratory mood as if they are at the state fair.

This was made real for me several years ago when a coworker, during a discussion of the discriminatory practices that were going on in the office, told me that one of her relatives had been lynched. The next day she brought in family pictures, including news clippings of the incident. Her relative was Jesse Washington:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington

"Black on black crime" as a stereotype has to be mentioned loud and long, as it is, in a pathetic attempt to drown out the history of white savagery and violence such as this.

Three kids, defenseless & vulnerable as all kids are. The adults on these images not only fail at their task to nurture & love kids but use their superior strength to wipe these young lives out.

2. How would you caption/narrate this series of images for a photo essay?

Nowadays the killings of black teens by white people are getting blatantly institutionalized.http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/not-war-its-12-year-old-boy-crowd-erupts-when-cop-beats-handcuffed-boy-video

3. Are you like me? Do you also feel the eyes of Tamir Rice and George Stinney on you?

Especially George's eyes. The deep sadness in his eyes conveys us also the empathy which makes this sadness possible. I see the sensitive boy he was.

Tips and Support Are Always Welcome

Who is Chauncey DeVega?

I have been a guest on the BBC, National Public Radio, Ring of Fire Radio, Ed Schultz, Sirius XM's Make it Plain, Joshua Holland's Alternet Radio Hour, the Thom Hartmann radio show, the Burt Cohen show, and Our Common Ground.

I have also been interviewed on the RT Network and Free Speech TV.

I am a contributing writer for Salon and Alternet.

My writing has also been featured by Newsweek, The New York Daily News, Raw Story, The Huffington Post, and the Daily Kos.

My work has also been referenced by MSNBC, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Atlantic, The Christian Science Monitor, the Associated Press, Chicago Sun-Times, Raw Story, The Washington Spectator, Media Matters, The Gothamist, Fader, XOJane, The National Memo, The Root, Detroit Free Press, San Diego Free Press, the Global Post, The Lost Angeles Blade as well as online magazines and publications such as Slate, The Week, The New Republic, Buzzfeed, Counterpunch, Truth-Out, Pacific Standard, Common Dreams, The Daily Beast, The Washington Times, The Nation, RogerEbert.com, Ebony, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Fox News, Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Juan Williams, Herman Cain, Alex Jones, World Net Daily, Twitchy, the Free Republic, the National Review, NewsBusters, the Media Research Council, Project 21, and Weasel Zippers have made it known that they do not like me very much.